Bummer said:
took a bit to get some inspiration for this again, but here goes
Why did we want Spiritomb?
Though there weren't very many Pokemon introduced in Diamond and Pearl, the inhabitants of Sinnoh were blessed with some baroque designs. Some of which were, unfortunately, outliers - yes, Purugly, I
am looking at you. There was something about Lucario's cool headband ears and Jenna Marble's land shark video come to life that made the kids go wild. Then again, it
was 2007. A new
Daughtry album came out that year so I'm not surprised if that's what all the hype was about. Probably not. But you know what 2007 and DP did bring? An evil amalgamation of 108 spirits of the pets your mom and dad said went to live on Uncle Pappy's farm: Spiritomb. You only first realize Spiritomb's existence when the inventor of teleportation, better known by her stage name Champion Cynthia, herself uses it as her lead in your Champion match. Little do you know that you've gotten yourself twisted into a web of being restricted from using the healing items that got you here in the first place and having nothing that hits Spiritomb super-effectively because it's Ghost / Dark, something you haven't seen yet in Sinnoh. When you've beaten it - and quickly realize that it was definitely the least of your worr-
why does her Lucario know all these coverage moves - you think a couple of things. One is "that'd be a swell Wonder Guard user!" and the other is "where can I get one?!"
You poor sap.
Why was it difficult to catch?
Spiritomb, its very being already composed of spirits, is physically imbued in the keystone that retains the shambles of an old statue's remaining structure. The very concept of its dwelling place leaves much to the imagination, but not very much in the ways of "easy" capture. "Shall we use Rock Smash on this old trash heap?" I imagined that just shattering the rocks would release the spirit into the world, but then maybe that's just like the genie tricking you into releasing him from his lamp. It probably would have been kind of hard to catch it without a Silph Scope, anyway. Where are Steven Stone and Blue when you need them? I think Spiritomb is marginally more important of a capture than a useless chameleon. In any case, it was not as simple as smashing some rocks; you actually had to find an Odd Keystone and talk to 32 friends in the Underg-
Did you say talk to thirty-two friends?
I agree, it's not a very reasonable number, but I guess nobody told the devs that very few players of Pokemon actually have thirty-two friends. Thankfully, this had a bit of breathing room in that you could simply talk to the same friend thirty-two times. Then again, that's what many of us do already... I guess you could say the life of a Pokemon enthusiast has its trade-offs. Anyway, it was as monotonous and time-consuming as joining and leaving the Underground and speaking to the friend thirty-two separate times. Unfortunately, saving the game took
ages in DP, so what sounds like it would take around ten minutes to do would probably take a few weeks. Why is that? Because most of us were probably also busy riding our bikes through Solaceon Town over and over and over, hatching our eggs in-between saves and aggravating our friends because we weren't focusing on getting Spiritomb. Yeah, this had to be done over DS Wireless, so we were pissing ourselves and our best friend off all at the same time.
